While coaching at Saint Andrew’s School in Florida, Casey Powell brought his travel team to a pair of August tournaments in upstate New York. The first weekend, players arrived with their families in Camillus, New York. Then, they accompanied Powell to Lake Placid for its annual lacrosse summit of former college and professional lacrosse players.

Along the way, Powell took the team through Carthage, New York, where he grew up. He wanted to show the players a lacrosse culture he was introduced to, one that followed Powell to Syracuse for college. Because Powell noticed that in Florida, that same culture wasn’t there. Powell’s life was transformed by lacrosse, and he wanted to share his knowledge of the game, he said.

“It was definitely something that I knew I wanted to do from the day I started at Saint Andrews, was to bring these guys to lacrosse country,” Powell said.

In college, Powell worked summer camps with various lacrosse communities. He and his brothers started a Harlem Globetrotters-esque show called “The Powell Hour,” which can still be found on YouTube. He served as an assistant coach for SUNY Cortland in 2008, and from 2010-13 he was the director of boys and girls lacrosse at Saint Andrew’s.

Now, Powell’s journey has led him to a volunteer coaching position with the Northwestern women’s lacrosse team. Powell remains the director of player development for Team ONE Lacrosse, a youth club located about seven miles from Northwestern’s campus, where he’s been for about two years. Powell expects to take on a similar role with the Wildcats.

“I’ve always taken different positions to continually learn about the game, learn to become a better coach and to see where the game can take me,” Powell said. “This is a really cool opportunity for me to work alongside a seven-time national championship coach (Kelly Amonte Hiller).”

Powell took over as the director of lacrosse at Saint Andrew’s in the fall of 2010, the same time he started playing for the Orlando Titans in the National Lacrosse League. He was familiar with the school and its campus because SU played Yale at Saint Andrew’s over spring break every year he was at Syracuse.

He was one of nine players who wore No. 22 for Syracuse after Gary Gait and won a national championship in 1995. After graduation in 1998, Powell played professionally in the NLL and Major League Lacrosse and represented the United States on multiple occasions, winning silver in the 2006 World Lacrosse Championship.

Despite his professional career, Powell was heavily involved with all the lacrosse programs at Saint Andrew’s, its former head coach R.J. Dawson said. He also coached travel teams that included students from nearby high schools and ran youth camps in the area. On some days, he went from teaching 8-year-olds how to catch to working with high-schoolers on their behind-the-back shots.

Powell also delved into his prior contacts and brought various professional and former college players to Saint Andrew’s. Dawson remembered former Orange players Matt Palumb, John Zulberti and Steven Bettinger coming to campus during Powell’s time there, along with SU head coach John Desko and Duke head coach John Danowski.

“There’s a tremendous amount of role models in this game,” Powell said. “So, sharing my resources and relationships with the people that I am trying to lead is something that’s important to me.”

He brought an added emphasis to little details at Saint Andrew’s. He wanted the players to always hold their sticks up — like they were about to receive a pass — even while waiting in line for drills, Dawson said. It reinforced a habit that would help when players were tired in the fourth quarter of games.

“The kids started to realize that they could have fun in the game,” Dawson said. “Sometimes, for them it might seem like work, whereas for him, he was like, ‘You’re playing a game. It’s awesome. Let’s enjoy this.’”

Even though Powell wasn’t always on the sidelines, he stepped in and coached at times by pulling players to the side if he noticed something. That passion hasn’t gone away for Powell. He still wants to spread what followed him out of Carthage.

Published on February 23, 2020 at 10:17 pm

Contact Arabdho: armajumd@syr.edu | @aromajumder